The Demon's Covenant

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “I’m sure,” Nick said. Their blades flashed and rang, again and again, faster and faster, until all Mae could make out was a metallic blur and Helen’s white face. “And I’m sure of something else. You should’ve spent your time learning to use these swords, not magic them.”

  The humming of Helen’s sword was more like shrieking now, a thin sound with steel and rage behind it. She went in again, wilder and sloppier, going for the kill. That bright sword kept coming within inches of Nick’s heart, his throat, his ribs. She scored another cut on the outside of his thigh.

  Nick kept his blows steady and controlled, making every one count. Helen feinted to his wounded side, and he faltered. She dived in to exploit the moment of weakness, close to his body, and Nick struck her a blow that forced her arm up.

  Her sword went flying into the air, sketching a golden arc against the night sky. Then it fell, all brightness lost, and was swallowed by the dark waters of the Thames.

  Nick kicked Helen’s kneecaps, sending her legs out from under her. She tumbled down to her knees before him on the bridge, and he rested his sword lightly against her neck.

  “Finish it,” Helen ground out, without lifting her bowed blond head.

  All Mae could see was his back, his black head bent to survey his kill. He looked huge and menacing suddenly, now that the woman was on her knees. Now that she was helpless.

  “No,” Nick said at last.

  Helen did look up then. “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to,” he said calmly. “I want you to go home, magician, and practice the sword without using magic. I want you to get really good. And then I want to fight you again.”

  His voice changed a little on that last line, dark and anticipatory. Helen smiled.

  “You’ve got yourself a date, demon.”

  Nick strode forward to where the Aventurine Circle stood, transfixed and appalled.

  Celeste Drake looked as if she might be considering taking some action as a demon advanced on her with a blade in hand.

  “He won his prize,” Helen called back sharply over her shoulder.

  Nick kept walking, swinging his sword in what seemed to be an idle manner. Celeste’s eyes followed it. Her free hand glowed a little, magic building hot in the center of her palm, and her other hand tightened on Jamie’s silver chain. Jamie wasn’t fighting anymore, but he was standing as far away from her as he could, the line of magic held taut between them.

  “My prize,” Nick repeated. “You don’t have any slightly more impressive prizes on offer? Yeah, I thought not.”

  Jamie looked indignant.

  Nick said, “You are so much more trouble than you’re worth,” and brought his sword down viciously hard, cutting the magical tie between Jamie and Celeste Drake in two.

  Jamie launched himself bodily away from the magicians and at Nick, almost knocking into him. Mae’s relief at seeing that silver cord severed was cut short when she realized why Jamie, who usually kept his distance from Nick, was pressed up against him with a hand over his. Jamie was trying to staunch the bleeding.

  It was hard to tell when Nick was pale, but his lips were leached of all color, white and set in a thin line.

  “Come back whenever you need to, Jamie,” Celeste said gently. “Demons always turn against you in the end.”

  Nick turned his back without a word. Jamie went with him.

  “C’mon,” Alan breathed, and Mae turned in time to see him slip a gun into the waistband of his jeans.

  Alan hadn’t pulled her back and held her bruisingly hard for comfort. He’d positioned her deliberately, had her exactly where he wanted her, so she stood between him and the magicians. So her body blocked their view of his gun.

  Jamie was on one side of Nick and Alan on the other as they went down one of the twin ramps, and Nick had relaxed enough to sag against his brother.

  It occurred to Mae that Nick hadn’t pushed Jamie away when he flew to him because Jamie was helping him stand up.

  “Jamie, let me.”

  “No,” Jamie told her. “I’ve got him.”

  “I want my sword,” Nick said without looking over his shoulder.

  “Right,” said Mae, and ran back.

  The Aventurine Circle were in the process of leaving the bridge, going north toward St. Paul’s, which was white as carved bone gleaming in the city lights. Helen was holding her side, one of the male magicians hanging solicitously around her. Celeste was still facing south, and she saw Mae coming.

  Celeste’s eyes narrowed as she watched Mae kneel down on the deck and reach for the broken sword.

  “The demon’s errand girl, are you?”

  “The magician’s sister,” Mae corrected.

  Celeste’s eyelashes swept down, modest as a lady hiding behind her fan. The china doll face was restored, a perfect mask now that the incongruously intelligent eyes were hidden.

  “When you’re ready to be your own woman,” she said, “come find me.”

  She reminded Mae of a different magician suddenly. For an instant the cold bridge at night slipped away and she saw Olivia again, Nick’s mother, with her midnight hair and her mad eyes, leaning close to whisper.

  It’s probably best to change the world yourself, she’d said.

  Before she died.

  When Mae focused on Celeste again, the woman had already turned, fragile shoulders hunched slightly against the cold, the lights of riverside London blurring the gold of her hair and the white wool of her dress into one iridescent shape walking away. Mae had no chance to ask her what she’d meant.

  She cut her hand picking up the broken blade that was half of Nick’s sword, and felt hot blood well up in the chilled hollow of her palm. She closed her fingers over blood and blade and ran to catch up with the others.

  They were near the car park when she reached them. A couple of pedestrians had noticed how Nick was staggering and looked torn between worry and disapproval. Mae hoped fervently that nobody would call the police. Nick needed to get out of the city fast, and besides, she doubted her mother would react well to Mae ringing and requesting bail money.

  “Got the sword,” she called out.

  “Good,” Nick said between his teeth as they tried to manage the ramps inside the car park, oily puddles harder to avoid now. Under the flickering fluorescent lights, Nick’s footprints were vivid red.

  Mae tried to avoid walking in them.

  “Lucky they let us go,” she said, talking mostly because she thought it might soothe Jamie. “I mean—I didn’t expect them to play fair.”

  “Having us trapped in a magicians’ circle and kidnapping Jamie isn’t exactly playing fair,” Alan observed.

  “No,” Mae said. “I just meant that they kept by the rules of the duel. You didn’t.”

  It wasn’t that she disapproved exactly, but seeing the flash of the gun as Alan tucked it away had caused an uneasy shift in her stomach. You expected the bad guys to be the ones doing the double-crossing.

  “It’s true,” said Alan, and maneuvered his brother so Nick’s back hit their car. Nick leaned against it and panted, long shuddering breaths like an animal in pain. “I was cheating. They were going after my brother. When losing isn’t an option, it doesn’t matter what you have to do to win.”

  He spoke in a distracted voice, as if he didn’t really care what he was saying. Mae didn’t care either, though, not really. Not when Nick looked as if he was about to collapse before their eyes.

  Alan rested his bad leg against the car for a second as well, then opened the door to the backseat and pushed Nick into it. Nick went sprawling, head tipped back. There was a sheen of sweat on his throat.

  Alan climbed into the car with him.

  “You were going to shoot that magician?” Nick asked, his voice a thread Mae could hardly follow.

  “If necessary,” Alan told him, voice calm and sweet. His face told a different story, but that didn’t matter. Nick’s eyes were closed.

  Alan reached out and pushed
the sweaty hair back from Nick’s brow, and Nick turned his head restlessly away. Alan withdrew his hand

  “I had her number the whole time,” Nick murmured. “You have so little faith.”

  “Well, faith’s hard,” said Alan, voice so soothing it was practically a melody. “Especially when you’re such an idiot. You realize this shirt is ruined.”

  He ripped the shirt apart with efficient hands, the buttons flying behind the headrests and into the front seat.

  Nick’s chest was heaving, slick with sweat and blood. There was a thin line where the sword had skittered over his ribs, and then the deep, terrible wound on the right.

  Mae tried not to panic.

  “That’s going to need stitches,” Alan remarked. “Mae, my first-aid kit is in the boot of the car. Would you go grab it for me?”

  He threw the keys over his shoulder at her without looking and she caught them, grateful for something, anything to do.

  “Don’t bother,” Nick rasped.

  Mae glanced at him, startled, and saw his fingers wrap around Alan’s wrist, forcing Alan’s hand away.

  “Why mess around? All you have to do is drive me out of here and I can fix myself up.”

  “Oh,” said Alan, his voice entirely changed, gone flat. “Of course. Stupid of me. I wasn’t thinking.” He paused. “Mae, would you grab the first-aid kit anyway?”

  “Sure,” said Mae, and went and grabbed it.

  When she got back, Alan was scrambling out of the car, wincing as he jolted his leg. He flipped the box open and sorted through it, then ducked his head into the car.

  “Here,” he said, his whole air terribly casual. “Here’s a pad. Hold it to the wound as we’re traveling, would you? We don’t want you bleeding out before we cross the boundaries of the circle.”

  Nick took it, hissing as he pulled himself into a sitting position.

  “I can take the back,” Mae volunteered.

  “No,” said Jamie. “I will. It’s fine.”

  He climbed in beside Nick a little tentatively, as if convinced that if Nick was even slightly jostled he would die on the spot.

  Mae figured the only thing she could do was get into the car so they could get out of there, so she did that as fast as possible. Alan backed out of their space and went out of the car park driving just a little over the limit.

  She twisted around in her seat as they sped through the streets of Southwark, at the same time Jamie asked hesitantly, “How are you feeling?”

  “Someone drove a very sharp sword between my ribs,” Nick said evenly. “How do you think?”

  Jamie laid a hand on Nick’s arm. “Well,” he said, a bit awkwardly. “Th—”

  “Don’t touch me,” Nick snarled.

  Jamie removed his hand as if scalded. “Sorry,” he said, and tried to tuck himself into a corner of the car as far away from Nick as he could.

  Nick leaned his head back against the headrest, teeth gritted against the pain as they went over a speed bump. He’d gone so white he would have looked like stone if not for the sweat making his black hair spike up and pooling in the hollow of his throat.

  “I didn’t mean for you to take that the wrong way,” he said abruptly.

  Mae stared at him in amazement. So, for that matter, did Jamie.

  “What?”

  “Demons don’t touch anyone without a reason,” Nick went on, his eyes shut again. “You can imagine what kind of reasons we usually have. I don’t like—not anyone—I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Oh,” said Jamie. “Oh, that’s okay! That’s fine. I understand. I am filled to the brim with understanding and, and acceptance! I’m very Zen like that.”

  Nick snorted.

  “Thank you,” Jamie said, fast, as if he wanted to get it out before any more misunderstandings appeared in their path. “You didn’t have to do that. If you guys had left me, I know you would have come back later. I mean, you could have done that. I was expecting it. You didn’t have to, um, get stabbed for me. So thanks.”

  “Stop talking like a moron,” Nick drawled. “If you can.”

  “Thanks,” Jamie repeated in a much less sincere tone.

  He shut up. The harsh, labored sound of Nick’s breathing was the only noise in the car. In the front Mae sat and regarded the broken sword on the dashboard and Nick’s strained white face in the rearview mirror.

  They were not quite out of London when they passed the boundary of Celeste’s circle. Nick’s breathing changed, became light and easy. His normal pale face in the mirror was such a contrast to the drawn reflection Mae had been studying a moment before that it appeared his cheeks had flooded with color. When she glanced downward she saw his wound had closed, chest whole beneath the blood and torn material.

  “You look better,” she said lamely.

  “I feel pretty good,” Nick told her, low and pleased. “I like winning. I told that magician I’d win too.”

  Only he hadn’t said exactly that, Mae thought, staring out the window as the wide gray expanse of the M4 opened and swallowed them up, leading them on the road back to Exeter, where Gerald and his magicians waited. They were no closer to solving the problem of Gerald than they had been the night before.

  What Nick had said to Helen the magician was, I’ll be killing long after you’re dust.

  Alan’s hands were tight on the steering wheel, knuckles a shade too pale. In the mirror, Mae saw Nick cross his arms over his ripped and bloodstained shirt. She took up the pieces of the broken sword and fitted them together, as if that could possibly help, even though she knew the only way to mend it was magic.

  8

  In Two Worlds

  The next day was a Saturday, and Mae came around to give Nick his first lesson in acting human.

  Once she was there, she found she had absolutely no idea what to do.

  The house the Ryves brothers were living in this time was even worse outside than their last one. It was brown, part of a solid block of houses that all looked as if they had been shaped by a giant child playing with mud. The Ryves house was at the end of the row, and someone had spray-painted in green and pink on the side.

  It was nicer inside. There was a gray carpet peeling up at the corners in the hall, but next to that was a fairly big kitchen, and up the stairs was a sitting room and one bedroom. Alan and Nick must be sharing it.

  Mae would’ve felt a bit uncomfortable doing something without Alan’s knowledge in Alan’s actual room, so she was grateful when Nick led her to the attic.

  They had a lot of weapons and books stored up there in boxes, and half the floor was fiberglass insulation and wooden slats, but the other half was worn floorboards. There was even a high, small window, filtering the sunlight in like a slow stream of honey.

  Mae sat on the floor with her back to the wall and said, “I keep trying to think of a lesson plan for humanity. I keep trying to think of any sort of plan, but I don’t have one. Nobody taught me to be human. I picked it up as I went along. I don’t even know where to start.”

  She didn’t actually expect any suggestions from Nick, standing silhouetted and silent at the window.

  But he said, “I thought we could start with this,” and threw a child’s copybook at her feet.

  Mae stared at it for a moment, wondering if it was an old one of his or Alan’s, but when she turned it over she saw no name written on it, and when she thumbed through the pages she found writing that looked adult.

  “It’s my dad’s diary,” Nick said.

  Mae almost dropped the book. “Black—”

  “No! I mean Alan’s father. Daniel,” he said. “Alan gave it to me after I knew everything. He said he thought it would help me to read it, and I tried, but I can’t read when I’m—disturbed.”

  Daniel Ryves. Olivia had talked about him, a little. She’d said that no man ever tried as hard as he had. The guy who’d saved her and Nick when she’d run to him, who had died to protect them all from magicians, who Alan had said would’ve wan
ted them to help people in trouble. St. Daniel of the Shelter for Women and Slightly Demonic Children.

  Mae couldn’t imagine what he could have written to upset Nick.

  “Well,” she said. The front of the copybook was gray and nubbly under her fingers, like worn old cardboard. “Well … sure.”

  She opened the book to the first page and read.

  I am writing this for my son to read, after I am dead.

  I have to accept that this is a possibility.

  The life I have chosen for us is dangerous. Four years ago I would never have believed any of this was possible. Four years ago I thought I had suffered as much as any man could suffer, that I could never suffer more.

  Four years ago I was a fool. Now I have seen magic written on the air in letters of fire, I have cut through enemies with an enchanted sword, and I have stared into the eyes of demons. I can’t be sure I will live to explain to Alan how I could have betrayed him so completely.

  I do not know how to explain it, but I want to try so that if I die he will know my last thoughts were of him: that I love him, and that I am so terribly sorry.

  I am letting my child grow up in the center of a nightmare.

  It happened like this.

  His mother died, and I think I went a little mad. Marie did not die quickly or easily. Alan was still a baby when we started going to the hospital regularly. He was learning to talk while she was losing her hair.

  I kept thinking she would get better, and then she was dead, and I felt like it was my fault.

  I had been married before. I was very young, and so was my first wife. Olivia was beautiful and wild and almost never kind. We were not happy. We were not happy, but I was charmed, enchanted: I felt as if she could do magic.

  Of course, I was right. I just didn’t know it then.

  I missed her when she left. Even after I married Marie, even though I loved her and we were happy, sometimes I would dream of Olivia coming back to me.

  Marie died, and I felt like I had betrayed her with my dreams. I felt like I’d wished her dead.

  I was half mad with guilt and grief. That’s the only way I can explain what I did.